A Microsoft executive has spoken up in defense of the PC, insisting that the industry is in the "PC plus" era and rejecting the label of "Post-PC."

Frank Shaw, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications, asserted in a post on the Official Microsoft Blog that the PC isn't going anywhere.

According to him, new devices such as eReaders, tablets, smartphones "aren't PC killers, but instead are complementary devices." Shaw argues that PCs aren't going away because there is a set of important things that they do "uniquely well," while noting that PCs are rapidly improving at the things that other devices do.

"Non-PC" objects help people communicate and consume, but they are unable to create and collaborate as well as PCs, the executive continued. "And thats why one should take any reports of the death of the PC with a rather large grain of salt," he said.

Shaw went on to describe Microsoft's vision of the future: "increasingly powerful devices of all kinds will connect with cloud services to make it all the more easier for us social beings to create, communicate, collaborate and consume information." He also added that the vision will "become clearer" in mid-September at the company's BUILD conference.

He concluded his post by again dismissing the post-PC label. "We think its far more accurate to say that the 30-year-old PC isnt even middle aged yet, and about to take up snowboarding," Shaw wrote.

Microsoft's position greatly differs from Apple's belief that the transition from the PC is inevitable. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last year that the iPad may eventually replace the laptop.

"The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways," he said. "The PC is brilliant.. and we like to talk about the post-PC era, but it's uncomfortable."

Jobs compared the transition to changes in the U.S. automobile industry. He likened PCs to trucks, which were more common early on because farmers were early adopters of the automobile, but now are used by a smaller number of people. Responding to assertions that the iPad is limited in creating content, Jobs said that "time takes care of lots of these things," adding that software advances will become more powerful as they add more features.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer strongly disagreed with Jobs. "Windows machines are not going to be trucks," he said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie questioned whether tablets would be more than just a fad. "Today you can see tablets and pads and other things that are starting to live in the space in between (a PC and a smartphone)," he said. "Personally, I don't know whether that space will be a persistent one or not."

Apple will make a significant step away from PCs this fall when it releases iOS 5, which has a "PC-free" design. "Perhaps iOS 5s paramount feature is that its built to seamlessly work with iCloud in the Post-PC revolution that Apple is leading," Jobs said.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has said that it views tablets as PCs. The company is betting that, over time, PCs, tablets and smartphoens will come together into a "unified ecosystem."

"Windows will be everywhere on every device without compromise," Ballmer said in January.

I don't think Jobs ever meant the PC was dead or anything close to the term with the "Post-PC era" description. He likened PCs to pickup trucks, which is very apt. Trucks still at the forefront of development, they have the highest profit margins amongst product lineups, there will never come a time where they will not be needed, and they are still the best-selling vehicles in the world. But they don't, haven't in a long time, and likely never will capture people's attention like cars do, and the same is true of PCs.

Let's be real here, folks. No matter how much Apple Kool-Aid you drink, PCs, in any form (remember that Macs are PCs too), aren't going anywhere for a long while. People who do real work, in any field (film production, music composition, web site and application development, graphics work, the list goes on) require the basic idea of a desktop (laptop, desktop, all in one) in order to get things done. Without a mouse and keyboard and multi-window user interface, people who use computers to get things done won't ever consider a tablet over a work machine. Sure, for Mom and Pop who just browse the internet and email with others, a tablet may fit the bill. But you can't discount hundreds of millions of machines being used for work other than the basics of computing; sure, maybe in twenty years things will be different, but the traditional PC won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Let's be real here, folks. No matter how much Apple Kool-Aid you drink, PCs, in any form (remember that Macs are PCs too), aren't going anywhere for a long while. People who do real work, in any field (film production, music composition, web site and application development, graphics work, the list goes on) require the basic idea of a desktop (laptop, desktop, all in one) in order to get things done. Without a mouse and keyboard and multi-window user interface, people who use computers to get things done won't ever consider a tablet over a work machine. Sure, for Mom and Pop who just browse the internet and email with others, a tablet may fit the bill. But you can't discount hundreds of millions of machines being used for work other than the basics of computing; sure, maybe in twenty years things will be different, but the traditional PC won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Sure but my bet is on those 'trucks' as SJ called them being more and more Macs and less and less MS boxes.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

The Apple fanboys here and at sites like this one all seem to miss the fact that the iPad is just a toy when talking about teh post PC era...sure, it kicks the PCs ass when playing angery birds and watching reruns of House on hulu - but practical PRODUCTIVE usage is limited. With ios 5 everything is tied to iCloud which means that everything lives in Apple's data center...there is no way that I have found for corporate IT to disable that, not in exchange or SCCM 2012 and not in mass via any tool from Apple.

But its not just icloud, when your little ipad can produce usefull data visualizations with large sets as fast as I can on my PC with Excel and PowerPivot, give me a call...

The iPad is a PC replacment only for those who only consume and occasionally email. For teh rest of us, it is an accessory.

saying that the ipad replaces a PC is like saying that the neck tie replaces the button up shirt...it does not replace it -- it complements it.

You can't quantify how much I don't care -- Bob Kevoian of the Bob and Tom Show.

PCs will become more like tablets (gaining simplification and ease of use), tablets will become more like PC (gaining more features), but HP wasn't very good at either in the grand scheme of things.

Microsoft has already made it clear there shouldn't be much difference between a tablet and a PC, and will hopefully success with Windows 8 as long as they avoid just strapping on a touch layer onto a desktop OS.

The Apple fanboys here and at sites like this one all seem to miss the fact that the iPad is just a toy when talking about teh post PC era...sure, it kicks the PCs ass when playing angery birds and watching reruns of House on hulu - but practical PRODUCTIVE usage is limited. With ios 5 everything is tied to iCloud which means that everything lives in Apple's data center...there is no way that I have found for corporate IT to disable that, not in exchange or SCCM 2012 and not in mass via any tool from Apple.

But its not just icloud, when your little ipad can produce usefull data visualizations with large sets as fast as I can on my PC with Excel and PowerPivot, give me a call...

The iPad is a PC replacment only for those who only consume and occasionally email. For teh rest of us, it is an accessory.

saying that the ipad replaces a PC is like saying that the neck tie replaces the button up shirt...it does not replace it -- it complements it.

That's what Macs are for.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

PCs will become more like tablets (gaining simplification and ease of use), tablets will become more like PC (gaining more features), but HP wasn't very good at either in the grand scheme of things.

Microsoft has already made it clear there shouldn't be much difference between a tablet and a PC, and will hopefully success with Windows 8 as long as they avoid just strapping on a touch layer onto a desktop OS.

Are you going to be betting real money on that theory?

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Guess the argument depends on how one defines the term 'PC'. The iPad is definitely a personal computer, more so in some ways than my multi-user iMac (27" Core i7 - very nice btw).

Also, popular need is really what the term post-PC is referring to, at the moment at least. My iPad doesn't run Mathematica (standalone) and so I need my desktop computer. However, many, many users do not need such a capability and so, the post-PC era is as good as here.

Interestingly though, the iPad does run Mathematica in the form of a window in Safari to the Wolfram web site in the guise of Wolfram Alpha. Cloud based computing. Once I can perform functions on my own data, the iPad will act as a window on such rich possibilities. (Apple ought, I believe, to culture Wolfram and other inspirational web entities )

To sum up, many of us here would not consider that personally, we are entering a post-PC age. However, to many users we are effectively there (or close with iOS not far away).

Ah so post pc era excludes Macs then? I see...well anyway back in the real world, Windows will continue to dominate. I see the iOS as a bubble...heres why, nothing else like it can gain traction in the way it has -- android is fractured like hell, Windows Mobile is an after thought and RIM is a laughing stock...

IOS is a walled garden and they never last, look at Prodigy, AOL, Friendster, and lately RIM, all walled gardens and all collapsed and collapsing...

You can't quantify how much I don't care -- Bob Kevoian of the Bob and Tom Show.

Ah so post pc era excludes Macs then? I see...well anyway back in the real world, Windows will continue to dominate. I see the iOS as a bubble...heres why, nothing else like it can gain traction in the way it has -- android is fractured like hell, Windows Mobile is an after thought and RIM is a laughing stock...

IOS is a walled garden and they never last, look at Prodigy, AOL, Friendster, and lately RIM, all walled gardens and all collapsed and collapsing...

You buy shares in MS and I'll continue to buy in Apple then, no need to argue

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Ah so post pc era excludes Macs then? I see...well anyway back in the real world, Windows will continue to dominate. I see the iOS as a bubble...heres why, nothing else like it can gain traction in the way it has -- android is fractured like hell, Windows Mobile is an after thought and RIM is a laughing stock...

IOS is a walled garden and they never last, look at Prodigy, AOL, Friendster, and lately RIM, all walled gardens and all collapsed and collapsing...

I just do not understand the term 'walled garden' as anything rational! What the heck are you talking about? I have a good friend who is writing software for the iPad, 3 applications - and I run that software as a beta tester. He's an independent developer and PhD candidate. He is not some Apple minion. He does not live behind a walled garden, he lives in the real world working on real-world solutions.

I haven't had a virus on a Mac since about 1987 and to the best of my knowledge have never had one on my iPad. Is that what you mean by 'walled garden', because in respect of secure, forward thinking computing, the term is stupid?!

What impresses me most about all of this is that it was caused by Apple and Apple alone. Smart phones and tablets have been around for some time, as the basement nerds (see post by a_greer) constantly blather on about, but Apple has turned the entire PC and mobile phone industry upside down in the last four years! And the music industry before that! How can one company have done that? But they did! Eventually Apple will decline just like very company surely will (see Microsoft) but Apple and Jobs will be in the history books for what they have done.

Personally I think tablets will eventually replace PCs completely. Here's some bullet points:

- Anything a tablet can't do now because it doesn't have the CPU/GPU power, just wait until the next version. Eventually it'll be able to do it. The performance gap between tablet and laptop performance will close too, just like it has between desktop and laptop. Very few people need to choose a workstation over a laptop today.

- Touch is a superior interface to the mouse/trackpad. Touch is direct, the mouse/trackpad is indirect.

- The whole physical keyboard thing is totally overblown. Most people don't type much. This has gotten a lot of press because the press happen to be a subset of the population who need to type a lot, fast. People got by with handwriting for centuries before keyboards became ubiquitous (and typing only really became ubiquitous with the PC and most people still can't do it very well). You can always add a bluetooth keyboard for when you're typing that novel anyway.

- They can make bigger tablets. Tablets could be paired with large external displays. Etc. There are a lot of ways to accommodate professionals.

- Most professionals I know maximise all their apps anyway. Not sure windows are really the incredible productivity feature people think they are.

- Programming isn't inherently tied to typing in code. In fact, that's a pretty bad way to do it.

This is great news to hear that MS is still living in the past. This will lead to an even quicker loss of market as PC's decline and eventually settle at 5% of the market. Of course, they have to believe their own hype. Let them have their delusions. It really all for the better.

Originally by Rickers - 2014 : Cook & will bury Apple. They can only ride Steve's ghost so long.

History reduce Apple Watch.... to a footnote in the annals of technology - Benjamin Frost Dec 2014

If we accept the "truck versus cars" analogy, then Apple maybe shooting themselves in the foot. With iPads becoming the tools of consumers and light weight users, then desktop computers become th domain of professionals. Yet on the professional front, Apple is pushing away customers. Look what happened with the fiasco that is Final Cut Pro. Editors, post houses, and film schools are now heading back to avid (ugh) or Adobe. And if you're using those two options, then why not just buy a cheaper window based machine. I know people in the audio business are looking at logic audio and wondering... Are we going to be screwed next. As for Aperture, what a buggy mess and will it's next iteration be IPhoto Pro?

So a slow shift back to PC's may be brewing. Apple builds trucks, but not the cheapest and with out the dedicated software, not the best.

I sure hope people will remember him as such. Watch the movie Hackers (1995) again for kicks. Compare where they thought tech would be with where we are now. Where we are now would not be possible without Steve Jobs and Apple. Windows and Android would not be what it is without Apple.

Of course they'll say this. Everything for MS depends on Windows shipping on PeeCees. They don't make hardware. Everything depends on their Windows licensing racket.

PC sales are stagnant (except when it comes to Apple.)

HP seems to understand the situation perfectly.

MS will deny and and all Post-PC realities until they too enter with their own Post-PC devices, and then a short time later do a Zune-like "reset" because once again they got it all wrong.

The only thing getting "rejected" here are Apple's competitors. It looks increasingly like the Post-PC era will be all Apple. Which of course posits massive growth for Apple. Watch for it.

Exactly right.

What Apple haters don't get is Apple will continue with Macs successfully into the post PC era while traditional Windoze boxes die off as with HP. The reason is continued innovation in both hardware and software something the Dells of this World don't know how to do and certainly their chosen OS won't deliver. Macs will morph into something else over time for sure though.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Personally I think tablets will eventually replace PCs completely. Here's some bullet points:

- Anything a tablet can't do now because it doesn't have the CPU/GPU power, just wait until the next version. Eventually it'll be able to do it. The performance gap between tablet and laptop performance will close too, just like it has between desktop and laptop. Very few people need to choose a workstation over a laptop today.

- Touch is a superior interface to the mouse/trackpad. Touch is direct, the mouse/trackpad is indirect.

- The whole physical keyboard thing is totally overblown. Most people don't type much. This has gotten a lot of press because the press happen to be a subset of the population who need to type a lot, fast. People got by with handwriting for centuries before keyboards became ubiquitous (and typing only really became ubiquitous with the PC and most people still can't do it very well). You can always add a bluetooth keyboard for when you're typing that novel anyway.

- They can make bigger tablets. Tablets could be paired with large external displays. Etc. There are a lot of ways to accommodate professionals.

- Most professionals I know maximise all their apps anyway. Not sure windows are really the incredible productivity feature people think they are.

- Programming isn't inherently tied to typing in code. In fact, that's a pretty bad way to do it.

Spot on. I really think we will see an iPad pro in the future that is far larger as productivity apps get more sophisticated. The iPad is currently on par with the Mac 512 and has a long way more to go.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Personally I think tablets will eventually replace PCs completely. Here's some bullet points:

- Anything a tablet can't do now because it doesn't have the CPU/GPU power, just wait until the next version. Eventually it'll be able to do it. The performance gap between tablet and laptop performance will close too, just like it has between desktop and laptop. Very few people need to choose a workstation over a laptop today.

- Touch is a superior interface to the mouse/trackpad. Touch is direct, the mouse/trackpad is indirect.

- The whole physical keyboard thing is totally overblown. Most people don't type much. This has gotten a lot of press because the press happen to be a subset of the population who need to type a lot, fast. People got by with handwriting for centuries before keyboards became ubiquitous (and typing only really became ubiquitous with the PC and most people still can't do it very well). You can always add a bluetooth keyboard for when you're typing that novel anyway.

- They can make bigger tablets. Tablets could be paired with large external displays. Etc. There are a lot of ways to accommodate professionals.

- Most professionals I know maximise all their apps anyway. Not sure windows are really the incredible productivity feature people think they are.

- Programming isn't inherently tied to typing in code. In fact, that's a pretty bad way to do it.

I think that really depends on who that user is. Someone who already loves their iPad and doesn't seem to use their desktop or laptop much because of it, probably was never really using their computer for things much of substance.

For a lot of people who do actual pay-the-bills work on their computer, the iPad is of no use whatsoever. I'm in the latter camp. My iPad is a really fun toy, but it is not even remotely capable of doing any of my work.

saying that the ipad replaces a PC is like saying that the neck tie replaces the button up shirt...it does not replace it -- it complements it.

This is a very bad analogy. Millions of users out there need only an iPad or "post-PC" device for what they do right now. Sure, people who make a living using computers and hobbyists and tinkerers need "PCs," but it is certainly not as simple as a tie VS a shirt for many consumers...
Furthermore, the capabilities of the post-PC devices seem to be advancing very rapidly. In a few years, who is to say that the hobbyists and tinkerers won't be happy with an iPad7GS or an Android tablet running Twizler as well?

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_greer

The Apple fanboys here and at sites like this one all seem to miss the fact that the iPad is just a toy when talking about teh post PC era...sure, it kicks the PCs ass when playing angery birds and watching reruns of House on hulu - but practical PRODUCTIVE usage is limited.

You seem to be (intentionally?) forgetting the main analogy Jobs uses when defining the term "post-PC." For serious, productive use, there will always need to be PCs just like for farm and construction work there will always need to be trucks. And yes, I know it gets the Apple haters in a twist, but Macs are a growing number of the post-PC PCs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_greer

IOS is a walled garden and they never last, look at Prodigy, AOL, Friendster, and lately RIM, all walled gardens and all collapsed and collapsing...

Yeah, but they all sucked. Good riddance. Nintendo, Xbox and iOS are all walled gardens and doing fairly well...

Sure, for Mom and Pop who just browse the internet and email with others, a tablet may fit the bill. But you can't discount hundreds of millions of machines being used for work other than the basics of computing; sure, maybe in twenty years things will be different, but the traditional PC won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Apple has never concentrated on the enterprise, and the uses you cite are becoming niche. That is why Apple is now a portable device company, and the last I checked, they are doing just fine.

You talk down Mom and Pop, but they are Apples' bread and butter. With the iPod, the iPhone, and now the iPad, Apple is making the computers that the vast majority of people use. "Work other than the basics of computing" is a commodity business, and not the profitable sweet spot.

The PC is dead as a mainstream device. The iPad killed the netbook, and it is starting to kill the cheap crappy laptop market. Who wants a big clunky beige box? I suppose if you are some sort of big-time spreadsheet number cruncher, but those guys spend as little as possible to get the job done, which means buying Windows machines while giving little or no profits to the clone makers.

Apple is very smart to ignore that market and concentrate on the iPad.

I think we will see more and more people go tablet only pretty soon. Laptops will stay home more and more, as tablets travel with us more and more.

iPad / mac integration really stands to gain from this because you can start a garage band or iMovie project on the tablet, and seamlessly sync it to the Mac when you get home from filming and doing minor edits to do the final editing and mastering. That type of integration no other company can offer.

Google's OS is good for phones / devices you don't really want to sync to your PC. Its really quite separate from it. So it will never provide the type of integration mentioned above.

Microsoft's vision of tablet being a PC does not work, because you can't have the same UI in both, and it will be quite some time before both can run on the same chip architechture without sacrificing performance on PC and battery life on Tablet. So if you have to have different UI, why not customize the underlying OS, strip away support for all the stuff that won't be used, like CD drive etc and optimize each OS for what it will be used for.

I think this is why HP bought webOS, but in the end they realized they could not build a desktop version of OS quickly or cheaply enough so they gave up.

Plus iOS is a unix-like OS based on darwin kernel and very similar userland that runs natively on the hardware. No Java, no Silverlight, no BS. That means iOS does not need a dual core CPU to run smoothly. It does not need to run a virtual machine on top of linux, it is unix. So I feel that it is the best platform going forward, and the vision apple had from the start is really the smartest in the industry, which will help it in the long run.

I think that really depends on who that user is. Someone who already loves their iPad and doesn't seem to use their desktop or laptop much because of it, probably was never really using their computer for things much of substance.

For a lot of people who do actual pay-the-bills work on their computer, the iPad is of no use whatsoever. I'm in the latter camp. My iPad is a really fun toy, but it is not even remotely capable of doing any of my work.

But the current iPad is just an infant. Think back on the apple II e, it couldn't do any of the things you now consider "work". The iPad has lots of room to grow, and differentiate, and wildly proclaiming that no tablet will ever be suitable for "paying-the-bills work" says very little for your recognition of just how much technology is going to grow over the next 5, 10 and 50 years.